![]() ![]() Need to get on with things, so I haven't sat it through to the very end to see what happens. With all that "5 minutes a day" advertising, they ought to warn people that the 'placement test' has to be sat in sequence, in its entirety, and could take an hour if you're not very fast. Nor is there any way to take the questions out of order (i.e., stop asking me easy ones, I want to see how hard it is at the very end). That means if you're starting to find it too difficult, the only way to say "OK, you've found my level, don't ask me any more questions I can't do" is to press the "skip question" button AND acknowledge that your 'blank' answer is incorrect, One By One For Every Single Question Until The End Of The Test. Because there's no way to finish the "placement test" early. I hope the test doesn't just keep getting bigger as people add more questions / answers to the database. If this is supposed to be a self-study aid, then there really ought to be a button saying "I was close enough, mark that one correct please" for this kind of question.)Īll answers have a "report" button, which suggests it's been crowd-sourced. (I didn't think my style of English was the thing under test here. I hit the first snag when I translated 我的朋友都喜欢跳舞 into "My friends all like dancing" and was told this answer is incorrect because the correct answer is "All my friends like dancing". (When asking to translate sentences like 你认识到医院的路吗 into English, the source is presented as hanzi with no pinyin, but with audio available.) Then similarly asked me to translate "is tomorrow Sunday?" from a set of hanzi, and "He drinks coffee at 6:15 in the morning." etc. It asked me to translate 你叫什么? and 我也很高兴认识你, then asked me what means "incorrect" giving me buttons to insert 哪, 对, 国, 都, 不 or 香港. but it might give some people a 'nice feeling' that they're making progress. Not exactly what I'd call "learning Chinese". And pair up 你好 with nǐhǎo and 好 with hǎo. Then it had me type the English word for 好. Then had me select the correct character for hǎo out of 再, 好, 你 and 见. Then played recordings of nǐhǎo and hǎo, and had me select the pinyin from a multiple-choice list. It put me into a multiple-choice test, asking if 你好 is nǐhǎo, hǎo or zài. Silas Brown then sent me this evaluation: To be more positive, Duolingo's Mandarin is only in beta right now, so in a while it may be better. After seeing how Mandarin works on Duolingo, I'll probably only (sparingly) use it for review and extra vocab. I was pretty disappointed about that because pinyin was incredibly helpful when I started learning Chinese and continues to be. Also, when looking around, I saw that they did not have a comprehensive explanation of pinyin. I went through some of the grammar notes for the lesson sets, and I think they're somewhat helpful. ![]() Also, some of the translations into English are a bit awkward and particular.Īfter seeing your email, I remembered that the online version of Duolingo is more comprehensive (than the phone app version) - it generally has grammar and pronunciation notes for each lesson set. I took a placement test, then started a lesson, but was disappointed with the format because it seemed oddly structured, as it introduced characters without saying their meaning. So, I was pretty excited when I saw that they were "hatching" Mandarin and, as soon as it was in beta, I started using it. I have been using Duolingo to supplement my French for a while, and I have often been quite annoyed at the fact that Duolingo did not have Mandarin (though it had Esperanto, Klingon, and other such languages). I received the following response from an undergrad who has been taking Mandarin for one and a half years: Never mind about misleading statements emanating from the author of the article (e.g., there are 1.2 billion native speakers of "Chinese"), they seem to overemphasize individual characters, downplay words, don't talk about sentence structure, grammar, and syntax, and don't give any indication of how or whether pinyin is used. Judging from the description in this article, I'm dubious about the efficacy of their method. Practice online on or on the apps!"Īfter reading Allan's article, I sent the following note to my students and colleagues: " Mandarin Chinese Is Now Available on the Language Learning App Duolingo", by Patrick Allan (11/16/17)ĭuolingo claims that it "is the world's most popular way to learn a language. A friend sent this lifehacker article to me: ![]()
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